No one really observes the Feast of Agravar, but still take the day off.

For Jack Kirby fans, inker Vince Colletta is infamous for cutting corners and eliminating details. He had done a few issues of Warlord that I thought turned out OK, but I'm not sure about this one: from 1980, Warlord #39, "The Feast of Agravar" Story and art by Mike Grell, inks by Vince Colletta.

With his companion Shakira, Travis Morgan is enjoying the hell out of his new, winged horse, Firewing. After a brief fight with some pterodactyls (sent by a mysterious, and unseen, master...) Firewing is injured: Shakira doesn't care for the way Travis treats the horse, but he argues it's just scratches. He leaves her to look after Firewing, while he explores another Atlantean ruin: as was often the case, some of the machinery was still working. Shakira rejoins Travis for a prolonged lecture about how the ancient Atlanteans had achieved science even greater than the surface world's, but had blown themselves up. This appeared to be an armory, with cool-looking laser rifles.

The ruin is well-furnished, and was maintained by a robot, who introduces himself as Boss, and offers refreshments. It says it doesn't get a lot of visitors, since the locals had a superstitious fear of the place. A completely justified fear, since Boss drugs Travis and Shakira, all the better to serve them up at the "feast of Agravar." While the robot doesn't believe he's sacrificing them to a god, the "periodic 'feasts'" kept the giant monster from tearing up his complex. Shakira changes into her cat form and takes off, with Boss giving chase; leaving Travis to fight the giant serpent Agravar. Making her way back to the laser rifle, Shakira makes short work of both Boss and Agravar. Still, coming outside, Travis is dismayed to see just his saddle: Shakira let Firewing go, and he could be seen racing with another flying horse.

We mentioned Colletta before, when we looked at Warlord #35, six years back! The art was tighter that issue, but I don't know if this issue is on Grell or Colletta. And hey, #35 also featured Travis getting a drugged drink!


Lastly, the back-up feature this issue was a Jim Starlin OMAC story we saw some time back: it may have been meant for Kamandi, but was burned off here.